


Their Girl

by PaladinofFarore



Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22904296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaladinofFarore/pseuds/PaladinofFarore
Summary: Eve grew up knowing two things. One, that she was a little weird, she dreamed of angels and talked to gods and the crazed madwoman she was in a past life. And two, that one day, her mothers would come find her, and that she would be ready.Or: What if Joxer and Meg had raised Eve?
Relationships: Gabrielle/Xena, Joxer/Meg
Comments: 13
Kudos: 69





	Their Girl

**Author's Note:**

> Season five is noted for its wasted potential. I was always dissapointed that we never got to see our girls actually be parents, something made even worse by the fact that the writers of S5 basically didn't care about Gabrielle at all. I paired with another idea I saw floating around, what if Eve had been raised instead by Joxer and Meg? This effectively makes her into an entirely new character, one who was never a roman general. I also wanted to play around with the Christian concepts the show raises but never really goes into too deeply (with Eve at least) I hope you all enjoy. Please leave a comment if you'd like to see more like this.

Evie loved stories. Tales of gods and heroes told by the bards who passed through the tavern in the evenings, whispers of far off lands and rumors she overheard from men in their cups, the gossip from the town down the road. Whose husband had wandered off in the night? Which young woman was expecting a child? Was the legion really passing by soon?

Even at five years old, Evie loved them all.

But her most favorite stories always came at bedtime. She and her little cousin Virgil would crawl into the low bed they shared, Virgie got scared when he swept alone, and then her auntie Meg would tell stories about her favorite heroes.

Her mothers.

“Now Gabby, she didn’t like me too much,” Auntie Meg said. Her hair and dress were disheveled from the days work and the smell of ale and smoke hung about her.

“Mom didn’t like you?” Eve asked. She’d heard this story before and always asked the same question.

“I was kind of a rascal back in those days,” Meg scratched the back of her neck. “I was pretendin’ to be your mama, ya see, so I don’t blame your mom for not likin’ me.”

Mom and Mama, two terms that started forming images in her mind as soon as she was old enough to form thoughts of her own. Mom, with blonde hair, and eyes that Evie shared. Mama, who looked just like auntie Meg “but madder” as uncle Jox had put it.

“She came around eventually, though,” auntie Meg went on. “After we got through all the stuff with Princess Di. I got a fancy job cookin’ for a little while, then I moved on and after a little while more me and your uncle got hitched. Had to nail that man down, I tell ya. If I hadn’t he’d still be lost in the woods somewhere.”

“I would not,” her uncle groaned from the doorway. Dirt streaked his face and he smelled faintly of the stable. “I’d have found my way back eventually.”

“Yeah,” auntie Meg grinned. “After Xena and Gabs gave you directions. He was always gettin’ lost,” she faux whispered this last to the children. Eve giggled, little Virgil copying his older cousin.

“Did mom and mama get lost?” Eve asked.

At five years old she understood very little of the circumstances of her life. She didn’t notice the holes in the stories of Xena and Gabrielle, and she didn’t notice the way all the air went out of the room when she asked that question.

Her aunt and uncle shared a grown up look.

“We don’t know, kiddo,” uncle Jox told her.

“Will they come back?” it was an innocent question. One colored like a story.

“I don’t know kiddo,” uncle Jox said, quieter that time.

“They’ll come back,” she said aloud, nodding firmly. It was the only answer that made any sort of sense. Her mothers were heroes. If they were anywhere, they were lost in the woods somewhere, just trying to find their way back to her.

She nodded again, smiling, her aunt and uncles sad faces unnoticed. That night, she dreamed of a warrior princess and an amazon queen on a quest to find their daughter.

It was when she was around five years old that Evie started to realize that she was strange. Such things had never crossed her young, still very much growing mind until that point. She was fairly normal, all things considered. She lived with her aunt and uncle and her little cousin Virg in a tavern on a hill by the river.

In the mornings she got up and collected the eggs, helped her uncle with the animals, and then the rest of the morning would be hers.

She liked to run through the little forest that bordered her home. She liked to swing sticks like a sword with the children from the village down the road. She liked to go swimming in the river and lash out at the fish. One day she would catch one in her hand, she was determined.

All normal little girl things.

But when she was five the cracks started to show.

It was at five that she realized that it wasn’t normal to have two mothers. This she’d learned from Thaddeus, an older boy who was the son of the blacksmith down the road.

“You can’ have two mothers,” he’d sneared toothily.

“Sure I can!” she’d all but yelled back. The other children laughed at her very red, angry expression.

“No you can’t!” said Theresea, Thaddeus’ twin sister. “A woman ain’t got a cock to put the babies in!”

“Your mother probably squirted you out and dumped you in the bushes! That’s why only the idiot would take you!”

Her foots ends up connecting with Thaddeus’ groin, very, very hard. Hard enough that she almost didn’t escape from the encounter with the bruised toe she got as a result. When she did escape, she sat alone in the woods for nearly an hour thinking. Two mothers couldn’t make a baby? But that had always been what uncle Jox and auntie Meg told her!

“You were a miracle, sweetie,” said auntie Meg later that night. They were sitting in the stables giving Argo a rub down. The horse was probably Evie’s best friend in the world.

“But they said two ladies can’t have a baby!” Eve protests with tears in her eyes. “That you gotta have a cock.”

Meg is unfazed.

“Now, no one needs a cock...mostly,” she clears her throat and tugs at the neck of her dress. “But you don’t listen to them baby girl. Your moms, they did things their own way .Makin’ a baby? That’s not the most out there thing they did. They weren’t normal lady folk.”

“They weren’t?” Evie asks, wiping at her cheek.

“Gods no,” Meg ran a hand down Argo’s neck, giving her a firm pat. “If this old girl could talk. Argo here was there for a lot of it. Right from the moment those two crazy gals met.”

She’d heard the story of how they met. She had dreamed it, though she didn’t know at the time.

“Tell me a story, Argo?” she said into the mares ear. The horse whickered in reply.

“You’re their girl, Evie,” Meg told her with a pat to the cheek. She thumbed away a loose tear. “Never let anyone tell you otherwise. If they do, give ‘em another kick from me.” She gave an exaggerated kick. Evie laughed.

She would take those words to heart. When she was grown, and she stood before the emperor of Rome with nothing but the thin robe on her back and a shephards crook in her hand she would declare, “I am Eve, daughter of Xena the Warrior Princess and Gabrielle the Battling Bard, in both flesh and spirit.”

It was at five that she noticed that she and her family never went to the temple. Any of the temples. Their Inn sat at the apex of a large trade road, with Athens twenty miles to the west, and all the eastern roads leading straight into the heart of Roman territory. Every solstice Evie watched her friends pile into carts and make their way to the parthenon, fatty goats ready for sacrifice.

When out playing she saw people of all stripes lay flowers or loaves of bread at roadside shrines to Demeter or Hermes.

Her own family...didn’t do anything like that.

“Why don’t we go to temple?” she asked one morning, sitting on a log beside the river next to her uncle. He held a fishing pole in his hands and two tiny, barely edible fish were piled on the ground between them.

Uncle Jox didn’t answer at first.

Evie didn’t like when he and auntie Meg got like that. Most of the time they were loud, fun, funny. But then they weren’t, and she didn’t like it at all.

“Your moms...they didn’t get along with the gods too well.”

His eyes were on the sky as he said this.

“How come?”

“Because….” he sighed. “Because, Evie, they weren’t very nice to our family.”

“But the gods take care of everyone. The priest said so.”

Uncle Jox scratched at his nose. He sat up a little and adjusted himself on the log.

“Not everyone, kiddo. We like to be left alone. So we just don’t mess with the gods.”

When she was older, and the truth of her fate had been made clear to her, she would look back and sympathize with her uncle. How did one explain to a child that the gods of Olympus had marked her for death even before she had been born? That the ways of old were dying, and that she had been chosen by a god unknown and unseen to deal the death blow?

“Were they mean to mom and mama?”

“Some of them were,” her uncle said. “The god of war, now, he had a real thing for your mom.”

From there he told her the story of the magic scroll that Aphrodite had bestowed upon her mom, of the crazed adventure that had followed, and by the end Evie was howling with laughter, rolling in the dirt.

“Then there was the time your mama had to repeat the same day over and over again.” The stories went on.

The goddess of love, she did not notice then, was the only Olympian her family would name aloud.

The next crack, or rather, the point where everything shattered completely and she knew that she wasn’t normal, were the dreams. She’d dreamed vividly for her entire life. Images of adventure, of a woman with the same face as her aunt but with armor and and a sword, and a blonde woman with her own eyes.

But when she was six and a half, the dreams got stranger. She still dreamt of adventure, but then one evening when there was a rainstorm so heavy that the river flooded, she had a new dream.

In it, she sat in a grassy meadow filled with colorful flowers. Around the meadow was a ring of thick green forest, with boughs filled with birds and chattering squirrels. Above the forest loomed a mountain. An enormous, solitary peak with a snow capped peak. Thunder hummed around it, ready to crack.

“Hello there little one.”

Eve looked up to see that she wasn’t alone. Beside her saw a woman with long blonde hair tucked behind one shoulder. She wore a pure white dress, barely more than a shift, and she regarded her with a smile so kind it made her skin prickle.

“Hello,” Evie replied. “Who are you?”

The woman your laughed.

“That’s a little complicated, little one. I’m you. Or, at least, you used to be me.”

Evie blinked.

“My name is Callisto,” the woman says. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Callisto doesn’t tell her stories, but she does sit with her and talk. They weave flowers in each others hair, they talk about people, and places Evie would like to go someday.

“You’re going to go lots of places little one,” Callisto told her. “Just like your mama.”

Eve, as always, nearly falls over as she spins around to face the woman, eyes wide.

“You know my mama?!”

Callisto nods.

“I do. You were my gift to her, in a way.” Her eyes become glassy. “Or maybe you are her gift to me.”

“An interesting perspective,” says a new, much deeper voice. “On your own path to atonement. You were cleansed. You could’ve walked with us, Callisto.”

Across the meadow had appeared a man. He was tall and broad of shoulder. His eyes were a shimmering blue, and on his back is an enormous, feathery pair of wings. His hands folded behind his back, and he regards the woman and the girl with a strange expression.

“I could’ve,” Callisto agrees. “But that was given to me. Handed to me, out of guilt and a false sense of justice. Xena earned her light back. I want to earn mine. Another go around to make it right. Isn’t that what she’s suppose to bring us all, Michael? Atonement?”

The angel says nothing.

He only gazes up at the seat of the gods.

“Did they just not care?”

The question came when she was seven years old. The four of them were seated around the little dining table at the back part of the inn. It was a slow night, and even their regulars weren’t in that evening. A bowl of leftover stew is steaming above the little hearth in the corner.

Uncle Jox looks up from a letter he’d received that morning.

Auntie Meg beats him to it.

“What was that, sweetheart?”

“They just didn’t care about me, did they?” Evie says. She crosses her arms, resolute.

The thought had been festering in her mind for a month. The dreams kept coming. Filled with images of laughter, of adventures and pitched battles against evil. The dream from the night before had been different, with only the single, harrowing image of two women being crucified side by side, bodies frostbitten and nearly blue.

For a while the dreams had filled her with as much wonder as the stories.

Her mothers, heroes.

Heroes...who she couldn’t remember at all. Dreams weren’t real. Even her dreams weren’t really real.

“If they did,” she said bitterly, “then they’d be here.”

Her grumpy expression is broken only when her uncle smacks her.

It isn’t a hard smack. There’s not real force behind it, and she felt no pain at it. The shock of it however nearly sent her sprawling to the floor.

“Now you listen here, missy,” he begins, for the first time in her entire life a little scary. “Your mothers were two of the best people I’ve ever met. They were...are...my family. They love you more than anything in the whole world.”

There are tears in Evie’s eyes.

“Then why aren’t they here?”

“I don’t know,” Uncle Jox says. “But I know that if they’re not here, it's because they can’t be. Because if they could be, there’s nowhere else they’d be than with you.”

She hugs him then, and cries.

There’s a moment growing up that all, or at least most people have, where they realize all that their parents have done for them. When the mechanics of parenthood start to reveal themselves to a child. Evie realizes this soon after the day uncle Jox slapped her. The pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place.

They keep out of the sight of the gods. Her aunt and uncle don’t go far from home and they only meet with friends under the cover of night. Uncle Jox reads secret letters by candlelight, and of course, the dreams.

Dreams of her mothers, and of a demigod plunging an ancient bone into the chest of his own father.

“People have died for me,” she says one night to Callisto in her dreams. The woman only nods, thought not unkindly. “Why?”

“Because they love you and your mothers,” the woman she once was replies. “Or they believe in what you’re going to do.”

Evie’s brows furrow together angrily.

“What am I going to do?”

“You’re going to change the world.”

“Is that good?”

“That’s up to you I think.”

"What do you think I should do?" 

"The same as you, sister-daughter," Callisto pokes at her cheek with an index finger. "We're the same after all."

Evie looks down at the grass of her dreamworld. Michael wasn't there that day. The angel only poked his head in from time to time. Above her, Olympus towered, and she could here the hooting of owls. 

"I think I want to be a hero," she says finally. "To help people. To make things better." That's what her mothers had been. Heroes. 'I Sing of Xena' she had heard a bard say. 'Protector of all those in need!'. 

"Sounds like a good plan." 

"I...I don't know how."

She was a child then. She knew she was important, that she would change the world, but she had no true conception of her role. The One God had not spoken to her yet, and she had not yet earned the title of "Bringer of Twilight." All she thought of then was how could she make things better. Stop war and famine and bullying children. 

"I don't think anyone starts out knowing that little one," says Callisto. "Even your mama had to learn that."

This surprises Evie. 

"She did?"

"She did," Callisto confirmed. "And she did learn it. Slowly, painfully. That's why I chose her and Gabrielle for us. I thought..." her eyes grow wistful, pained. "I thought maybe they could teach us." 

Evie knows then what to do. Her mothers weren't with her, but she knew their stories. Stories taught lessons. A place to start, she decided with a grin. The next evening she dreams a memory so old that its barely there. She sees nothing in it, she only hears a voice whispering stories to her unborn ears. 

_"You're going to be a terror, aren't you?"_ Gabrielle's voice had said eight years ago to Xena's enlarged belly, a hint of mischief in her words. _"Just like her mama."_

When she’s seven and a half she decides she needs to learn how to use a sword. Heroes all ended up using swords. Uncle Jox shoots down the idea immediately. But she’s old enough then to know that her uncle is an easy man to fool, and that even if he’d agreed to it, he wouldn’t be much help. She loves her uncle dearly, but a mighty warrior he is not.

And she has to be ready. Her dreams don’t tell her the future. But as she was getting older she started to simply...know things. And she knows, somehow, that they’re alive. There’s no reasoning behind it. It simply is true.

So instead she picks up a sturdy stick and starts swinging it around in a clearing in the woods. Most of her ‘training’ is just wild swings followed some more controlled ones. Downward slash, thrust, diagonal slash, thrust again. Just like she saw mama do in her dreams.

After an hour she sets the large stick aside for two smaller ones. These she uses only for quick jabs, just like mom.

“You’re gonna poke an eye with those,” she looks up and sees a dark haired man sitting on a nearby tree stump. He had a beard, dark colored armor, and eyes as old as eternity.

“You’re the god of war,” Evie says. She goes back to her training without further comment.

There’s a pause and then the man laughs. When Evie twirls around to start jabbing in the other direction, he’s standing right in front of her.

“Smart little shit, aren’t ya?” he smirks, and Evie knows she doesn’t like him very much. “Whatcha doing that for, kid?”

“I have to be ready,” Evie answers.

“For what?” the god of war laughs. Its a cruel, spiteful sound. “Didn’t realize the slayer of gods was gonna use some twigs. Sis is probably quakin’ on her throne.”

“For when they come,” Evie answers again. She doesn’t spare the war deity another glance. Instead she focuses only on breathing, on her movements. “I have to be ready.”

The laughter died on the war gods lips.

“They’re dead.”

“They’re not,” Evie replies.

The war god snorts.

“You really are her kid. Uptight, stubborn. You even got blondie’s eyes….” he shakes his head. When Evie looks up again he’s gone.

From there she sets aside the sticks and starts trying to do flips. The first attempt barely gets her off the ground. The second lands her straight on her backside. She cries out like a bleating baby goat, and she’s thankful she’s alone. Or at least she thought she was. She feels the presence crawl down her neck.

“Be careful there little one,” says the woman in the pink, filmy nightgown. “You’ll break your neck.”

Evie pulls herself up, hand going to her sore bottom.

When she looks up at the goddess of love, she hears a gasp.

“I’m fine,” Evie grunts. She straightens up and looks at the goddess more closely. “You’re Aphrodite.”

“The one and only sweet pea,” the radiant blonde steps closer. “My oh my, you are something.”

Evie ignored her and went back to flipping. The result was closer to a series of somersaults than flips. She rolled around in the dirt, getting her favorite shirt quite dirty in the process.

When she rolls onto her back, the goddess is standing over her, looking down pensively.

“You really are theirs,” Aphrodite says, more to herself than the girl. “Gab’s eyes...heh, told her the warrior babe didn’t step out on her.”

The goddess offers her a hand. Evie takes it, getting back to her feet and dusting herself off. She looked up at the golden haired woman. The second deity to speak to her in an hour.

“You were my moms friend friend, weren’t you?”

The goddess smiles sadly.

“Sure was little one.”

“You’re not going to hurt me?”

She’d been taught to fear the gods. Yet two had spoken to her and she’d been fine.

“That would be lame of me, killing my best friends daughter….what’re you doing out here? Can’t be that fun rolling around in the dirt.” She eyed the stains on Evie’s shirt with distaste.

“Getting ready for an adventure,” Evie explained. “If my mothers aren’t coming back, then I’ll just have to go find them.” She noted the goddesses skeptical, almost pitying look. She was getting sick of grown ups looking at her like that.

“They’re probably dead, sweetheart,” the goddess said carefully.

“So?” Evie shot back. “Mama and mom came back all the time. Maybe this time they just need my help.”

She went back to her flips.

The goddess sighed.

“Good luck little one. You sure got some girl here, Gabby.”

She starts telling stories after that.

The bards tell her moms scrolls, but they get it all wrong. Sometimes its minor little things. A misplaced character or a little thing left out. Othertimes its just completely wrong. Her mama had not fallen in love with Ulysses. Now, Evie had never read the scrolls herself. They were missing along with her mothers.

But she had her dreams, and she had her heart, so one evening in the tavern she got up on the little dais, unprompted, and began.

“I...I sing of Xena!” she starts, stumbling out of the gate. Only half of the tavern seems to notice. Curious eyes turn in her direction. Auntie Meg does notice but she’s too preoccupied filling tankards of ale to step in. “And...and how she saved Athens from destruction!”

The original story had used the word 'annihilation’ but the words was too much for Evie’s lips.

She told the story in full, stumbling every other sentence. When she was finished the applause was tepid, and she slogged out of the room, red faced and ashamed.

“That was pretty good,” Uncle Jox told her in the kitchen, munching on an apple. “I wasn’t there for that one, but I think you got it.”

“It was terrible…” Evie whispered, head hanging low.

“Nah,” her uncle reached forward and gave her a pat on the shoulder. “Just your first try. You'll get it." He finishes the apple with a loud crunch.

So she tries again the next week. She gets a little better, and she dreams of a day when she'll speak before countless more, telling the story of the divine love that birthed her. 

She was going to be ready.

The world was so damn bright when they emerged from their would be tomb. It all seemed so damn new. Like a shiny glaze hung about the world. Colors were brighter and the familiar was dotted with the new.

Not everything has changed during their sleep however.

On their first night back amongst the living something familiar happens. Joxer finds them in the forest. They almost dismiss him as just a passing trader without his clanking armor. It’s the horse that gives him away.

Seeing as it’s their horse.

“Argo?” Gabrielle says aloud.

The horse wickers, and the man guiding her turns on his heel, nearly toppling over.

Their rigid as boards when Joxer embraces them, eyes wide as bowls. The cold of the cavern and the sheer panic that was rising in both of them made them...uneasy.

“How long?” Xena whispers. Her hand finds Gabrielle’s. Even hours later it was hard to get the warmth back.

“Eight years,” Joxer answers, solemnly, but unable to hide the elation that their reunion had bloomed.

“Eight years,” Gabrielle repeats. Their hands mash tightly together. It’s a miracle neither of them break any fingers.

“Where’s Eve?” Xena asked, barely audible.

“She’s at home,” Joxer replies happily. His expression softens. “Come on. I’ll explain on the way.”

They listen in a state halfway between numbness and erratic panic as Joxer recounts the years of their absence. They do not stop to camp, instead they travel straight through the night, listening to their friend speak. Much of his story washes over them. They're still numb from sleeping eight entire years. Xena is sure she's going mad. Had Joxer not insisted the two of them mount Argo while he led her by the reigns, she's sure she'd have fallen to ground and screamed. She'd lost another child. Another child had been torn from her hands. Solan's face played across her mind, and she felt her hands begin to tremble. 

Gabrielle takes her hand. They're seated together in the saddle, and her shorter wife wraps the warriors arms around her. 

"She's not lost," Gabrielle told her with frigid lips. 

"Of course she isn't lost," Joxer said from in front of them like its the most obvious thing in the world. "I saw her this morning." 

"I love you," Xena whispers into Gabrielle's ear. She doesn't know what else to say. A few stray tears trickle from her eyes. 

"I love you too," the bard whispered back. "With all my heart." 

They reach the tavern around sunrise. Its much larger than they expected, nearly the size of Cyrene's in Amphipolis. A cock crows as they step out onto the dirt square in front of the door. Sunlight was starting to peer out over the crest of the hill, draping everything in pinkish orange. 

The sound of bare feet slapping against the dirt sounded to the left. 

"Mornin' uncle Jox," the little girl said without looking up. She's too focused on carrying a heavy bucket of fresh milk. "You're back early." 

She sets down the bucket besides the door and looks back up. In a single heartbeat, she goes white as the milk. Her eyes go wide. She doesn't move an inch as her uncle moves to her side, gets down on one knee and places a hand on her shoulder. 

"Evie," he says quietly. "I'd like you to meet Xena and Gabrielle, your-"

He doesn't finish before she's launched herself forward. 

It's Gabrielle she catches around the waist. She was the first to climb off Argo's back. She buries her face in the blondes chest. The bard can only look down in wonder. To her, the child had been an infant, a chubby, squawking thing with bright smiles bell like laughter bouncing on her knee around the fire. This girl is all knees and elbows. Xena's coloring, Macedonian skin and dark brown hair. She gasped when the girl, Eve, looked up and she found her own eyes staring back up at her.

"Mom," Eve chokes. "Mommy..." 

Xena climbed down from Argo, and found herself in the vice of her daughters grip.

"Mama!" she squealed. "I knew it! IknewitIknewitIknewit!" 

"Eve," the warrior says. Its all she can say. 

The three of them ended up in a single, tangled embrace. That day Evie had no thoughts of prophecy and dreams or of being a hero. The moment she'd waited for, wanted, for her entire life, had arrived. And so she lived in it, crying more tears in a single morning than the past eight years put together. 

"We can never repay you," Gabrielle says to Joxer when he moves towards the door of the tavern. 

"You don't gotta," he says. "That's what family is for. You just spend some time with your girl. I'll let you know when breakfast is on." 


End file.
